Poll

Outdoors

Are they adventure-seeking skiers in pursuit of more outdoor choices for their favorite season? Maybe they are impatient mountain bikers who yearn to be in the saddle, irked that biking season is months away.
Perhaps these people simply revel in new experiences, welcome a change of pace or just will find any reason to be outside.

Surrounded by rugged peaks, wildflower meadows and trout-laden rivers, people living in Colorado revel in the breathtaking — sometimes quite literally — vistas and accompanying recreational choices. Even so, adversity may arise in the high country. Getting lost or injured in remote areas, dodging wildlife on highways or having animal encounters, possibly dangerous, are not uncommon.

Wildlife has evolved astonishing tactics to cope with extreme weather. Like retired New Jersey snowbirds descending to West Palm Beach in the fall, hummingbirds spurn winter, turning their iridescent feathered backs on Colorado and heading south to friendlier habitat.
Bears vanish into dens to hibernate, slowing their metabolism enough to survive the winter without eating or drinking.

While hiking near Edwards last week, my friend and I spotted a curious pattern of a broad object that seemed to have swept down the snowy path not long before we arrived.
As we reflected on the beauty of our frosty surroundings, the thickets of evergreen trees with diverse shapes and sizes reminded us that ‘tis the season for folks to head for the woods with a saw and, permit in hand, choose the perfect tree to drag along the path (in this case, for a painfully long distance), and tie to the roof of the car for the trip home.

The sun was warm as we gathered on Vail Pass last July. Paige Singer, a biologist for Rocky Mountain Wild, and Lisi Lohre, Citizen Science intern for the Denver Zoo, handed out hardhats and bright orange vests to the three volunteers before we piled into an SUV. We drove to a spot between Copper Mountain and Vail Pass, and parked on the shoulder along westbound Interstate 70, near where a number of motion-triggered cameras had been placed in the spring.

Sunday marked the end of daylight saving time, and with the shifting hours of our daily routines, wildlife can be caught off guard. Bewilderingly, the human world around them has been altered overnight. The result of this confusion is often car accidents.

Children fear them above all else. Over half of women and one in 10 men have varying degrees of aversion to them. One to three million of them are present per acre of land, and no human is more than 10 feet away from this creature at any time.

Being portrayed as scheming, cunning beasts with bloodlust, such as Lord of the Rings’ Shelob or Harry Potter’s Aragog, it’s no surprise that spiders are so maligned and feared.

The drying leaves rattle in the breeze, a morning chill freshens the air, and, in the distance, the shrill echo of a majestic bull elk signals that fall has arrived. On a mountain path, there are well-placed mounds of scat, laden with seeds, indicating that a bear stood in that very spot not so long ago.

Several years have elapsed since Colorado’s foothills have seen significant fires, but the haze that persisted over our skies reminds us that the danger of forest fires is real. We worry about homes, pets and memories. But with wildfire as the most serious threat to our state, what happens to the wild animals when the fires ignite and begin rapidly spreading along with its acrid smoke and extreme heat?
For pets and livestock, there are plans in place.

“There’s no sensation to compare with this. Suspended animation, a state of bliss.” — Pink Floyd, lyrics from “Learning to Fly.”

Pink Floyd may not have written “Learning to Fly” about fly-fishing, but plenty of anglers partially submerged in the frigid waters of Colorado rivers would happily describe the sport as definitely imparting “a state of bliss.”